30 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
at maps of ancient trade we are struck with a network of small roads meeting and crossing each other at various points. However we may decipher two main trade routes from India to the mediterranean. The northern most followed the river Oxus and encircling the northern basin of the Caspian sea converged on the Black sea and thence to Constantinople. The middle one rather followed a straight path, with many bifurcations which meet at market. It starts on along the southern basin of the Caspian Sea through, Tebriz, Erzewm Trebizond and through the Black Sea to Constantinople. These were the two main land trade routes between the India and the west.
There were also two marine routes though one of them was only halfway marine. Of these one was the Red Sea route. Ships from Indian ports crossed the Indian ocean either to southern Africa or sailed upwards, and touched at the ports of southern Arabia and Aden and through the St. of Babel- mandeb (the gate of Tears) ploughed the waters of the Red Sea, touching at Jedda on the Arabian coast and Bernice on the Egyption coast. From Bernice goods were taken by Caravan to Thebes and Kos where they were gained through the Nile to Alexandria and from thence to Europe. The other marine route lay through the Persian gulf. Ships sailed from Baroach and kept hugging close to the land and touched at Masket and at Ormuz through the gulf of Oman to Bassora. From Bassora at the mouth of the Persian gulf, the goods were taken by the Caravan along the shores of the Euphrates and Tygris through Babylonia to Antioch on the mediterranean.
These two marine trade routes continued upto the present time but the story of the land trade routes is entirely different. They were closed and were closed for ever and the history of their foreclosure is perhaps the only event in the Asiatic continent that profoundly affected the history of Europe.
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